International Heliophysical Year kicks off
The International Heliophysical Year (IHY) - a UN sponsored scientific programme to promote a better understanding of space weather and the Sun's impact on the solar system - was officially launched on 19 February in Vienna, Austria. Space weather is caused when streams of charged particles - plasma - are ejected from the upper atmosphere of the Sun. This stream or solar wind enables the Sun to interact with all the planets in the solar system. A variety of physical phenomena are associated with space weather, including geomagnetic storms and substorms, ionospheric disturbances and scintillation, aurora and geomagnetically induced currents on the Earth's surface. In the past, scientists have studied solar wind and space weather's impact on the Earth. Now, with the launch of the year-long programme, scientists will extend their study further a field. 'Fifty years ago the International Geophysical Year marked the starting point to see Earth in space. Now with the IHY we are on the threshold of being able to investigate the interconnectivity of the whole Solar System,' says Hermann Opgenoorth, Head of the Solar System Missions Division at the European Space Agency (ESA). ESA will contribute to the international year by providing data from several of its spacecrafts. For example the SOHO space craft monitors the Sun for any sign of violent magnetic activity which could affect the Earth. 'ESA's heliophysics space missions - in particular SOHO, Ulysses and Cluster - are key members of a network of spacecraft providing data for such studies,' says Richard Marsden, ESA's Ulysses Mission Manager and Project Scientist. Plasma instruments are also aboard the Mars Express, Venus Express and on Cassini, the joint NASA mission to Saturn. In addition to fostering scientific cooperation, the year-long programme will also aim to raise awareness about the important relationship between the Sun and the Earth through a series of public events. 'When people hear the word astronomy, I believe only five per cent think of the Sun-Earth connection. Through IHY, I would like to raise that to at least 10 percent,' says Carine Briand of the Paris Observatory, and co-chair of the European coordinating committee for IHY. The IHY is part of a decade-long initiative called International Living With a Star, involving collaboration between 27 space agencies around the world.